From the coeditor of Dissent magazine, this panoramic yet close-up history of the American left—reformers, radicals, and idealists who have fought for a more just and humane society, from 19th-century abolitionists to Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky—gives us a new perspective on two centuries of American politics and culture. Michael Kazin takes us from antislavery and early feminist agitation to the labor struggles of the industrial age, through the emergence of anarchists, socialists, and communists, right up to the New Left in the 1960s and 70s.

"Lively and illuminating ... Kazin's book [is] a pleasure, but it is also a work of honest rigor. Kazin understands the limitations of the left, its self-destructive divisions, its difficulty in establishing an American presence within an international movement.... It is, to say the least, timely."—LATimes